If Fengyuan can be believed this is the oldest tea I have drank and I think they are telling the truth about the age. Whether or not it is a real Zhong Cha tea is anyone’s guess. The color of the tea soup was quite brown to start and slowly turned into a brownish red as I resteeped it. There was some storage taste to this tea, I would say for the first three steeps then basically nothing. The bing itself told me little about the tea except that it was darker than some ripe teas in color. Other than that it was nondescript. There was no inner ticket on this tea. As far as notes go there were a variety of complex notes to this tea. Some were positive, some a little negative. I am at a loss to describe them exactly because this is like no tea I have ever drank. I detected no off flavors or bad storage flavors. This was not an expensive tea which leads me to believe it may be a fake Zhong Cha. It was only around $50 or so. I do not know how much a Zhong Cha from 1992 should go for. I suspect more but who knows. The leaf seemed somewhat low quality which could explain the price too. Perhaps it was something that had sold for two or three dollars in 1992. Whatever the exact age I am fairly sure this is old. I enjoyed the tea even though all the flavors were not sweet pleasant flavors. There was quite a mix here. I don’t think Fengyuan sells samples of this tea. I bought the whole bing.
I steeped this eight times in a 180ml teapot with 10.4g leaf and boiling water. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, and 25 sec. There were more steeps to the leaves had I wanted to continue, I’d say this tea would have gone between 12 and 15 steeps judging by the color in the eighth steep.
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